You know the cold call drill...calling prospects who you know nothing about, reading from the same phone script over and over... with little to no results. Most people won’t answer their phone if it’s a number they don’t recognize and if you do get them on the phone, the second they hear you reading from a phone script, they’ll most likely hang up. So how do you kill your cold calling and move leads successfully down your sales pipeline? Using Inbound methodologies, warm calling, and optimized sales strategies learned from Dan Tyre of HubSpot.
I had the privilege to take part in Dan Tyre’s HubSpot Pipeline Generation Bootcamp. It’s an exclusive 8-week course to teach you how to lose the cold calling tactics and advance your sales efforts to produce quality leads for your Inbound Marketing Agency. Some of the key takeaways from Dan’s class, will help create exponential leads for any Inbound marketing and sales professionals.
1. Research Your Prospects Thoroughly
Making the same calls with the same script to strangers can make you feel like you’re on a loop, desperately waiting for the one bite that never comes. One of the things I learned from Dan’s bootcamp is to remember that you’re selling to humans, people just like you. Do you answer cold calls and if you do, do you buy from them? No. To move a prospect down your pipeline, it requires human connection. Research your prospect before you reach out to them and find something you have in common — you went to the same university or you both hate the Chargers. Even if you can’t find something in common with them, start by making a joke. Just show them you’re human too.
Also, research your prospect’s personality type. Tools like Crystal, can analyze a person’s LinkedIn profile and assess their DISC profile. DISC is a behavior analysis tool, that scores a person based on their Dominance, Influence, Compliance and Steadiness. From this analysis, Crystal gives suggestions on how to sell to your prospect’s personality type.
2. You’re Helping People
Ironically, the best way to sell to prospects is to not necessarily “sell” at all — you’re helping people. When you call or email prospects offer them tips on how to improve their outreach or website. This builds trust and authority in the beginning of what you hope to be a long-term relationship with your prospects.
3. Smarketing is Key
There’s forever been a battle between the sales and marketing departments, but your business will acquire more quality leads if you work together using Smarketing. By using the same integrative process for marketing and sales, you’ll be able to make your buyer’s journey seamless.
4. Keep Asking Questions
Once you have a prospect on the phone, don’t just talk about yourself. Instead, continue to ask them questions about their company and gather as much information as possible. When you call the prospect, you’re entering their narrative. By continuing to ask questions, you’ll show true interest in your prospect and how you can act as their guide to achieve their goals. Following your questions up with a quick re-cap of what your prospect told you were pain points will show them you’ve listened to their problems and can provide them with a solution.
5. Automate Your Sales Process
With HubSpot’s automation tool, you can set up a sequence of emails scheduled to send to your prospects with automated personalization tokens for the prospect. In these sequences, you can create tasks in between your emails to call or check-in with your prospect. These automated sequences will save you time and keep you organized.
The Inbound methodology and successful sales strategies learned from Dan Tyre’s HubSpot Bootcamp, has helped our agency optimize our sales pipeline and triple our leads. Just one of these takeaways from Dan’s bootcamp can help turn your agency's Smarketing team into successful lead prospectors.
